Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to transcoding media content, and more specifically, to techniques for extracting metadata from video content as part of a transcoding operation and using the extracted metadata to optimize the transcoding operation for the video content.
Description of the Related Art
A number of different techniques exist today for delivering video content to users. Generally speaking, existing systems for delivering video content, such as over-the-air broadcasts, cable television service, Internet television service, telephone network television service, satellite television service, satellite radio service, websites, etc., provide a relatively impersonalized, generic experience to all viewers. For example, with respect to broadcast television, all viewers of a given television network station receive essentially the same content in essentially the same order.
As the number of delivery mechanisms for delivering video content to users continues to grow, so does the need to encode the video content in various different formats and bit rates. For example, the encoding format for the video content used in broadcast television may differ from the encoding format used in high-quality media streaming. Moreover, in order to provide an improved media streaming environment, content servers may store the video content in multiple different encoding rates, so that an appropriate encoding rate can be selected for streaming to a particular client device. For instance, the content server could select an encoding with a relatively high encoding rate to transmit to a client device with a relatively high bandwidth network connection, and the content server could select an encoding with a relatively low encoding rate to transmit to another client device with a relatively low bandwidth network connection.